Final S'more
Comm 411- Anna McPherson
Novel Assignment- Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas was a sad but wonderful book to read for this class. It portrayed a loving and caring mother who did all she could to love her son. We read about different mothers in books we assigned and it explained to me that mothers are seen in all different sorts of light. There were also characters that were considered "mother figures" because they may not have been the real moms. The mother figures made me happy though because they still loved the child as if it were their own and cared for them as well. I enjoyed learning how mothers were seen in novels.
Magazine Assignment
“Amy Adams is getting every mom-to-be’s dream—a custom-made maternity wardrobe from Carolina Herrera! The designer is reworking pieces from her collection to accommodate Adams’s ever-growing baby bump as she promotes her new film Leap Year. “They made my clothes for the entire press tour. They’re amazing. They did such a great job,” Adams told us.” (InStyle 2010)."
Film Assignment- The Parent Trap
I watched the updated version of the "Parent Trap." This movie showed a mom and a mother figure since the twins were split up. Both the mother and the mother figure cared for each twin. The mother figure, Jesse, was the cook for the household of one of the twins and her father. The mother lived with the other twin on the opposite side of the world. The absence of the mother for one of the twins was harder on her and she missed feeling the emotional and warmth of a mother.
Television Assignment
I chose to do "Modern Family." It definitely shows me that my home life is typical to the show. It is a wonderful television show to watch and doesn't hold back on any subject.
Sofia Vergara- Gloria
Julie Bowen- Claire
Eric Stonestreet- Cam
News Assignment
The mothers that we studied throughout the semester in the news had all sorts of stories. We had happy, sad and shocking moms that were apart of everyday news. This links to a news clip about a mom who got a note from her daughter's school to not put oreos in her lunchbox, but more healthy snacks. ""We noticed last minute that we ran out of fruit or we would have put that in there instead," the 22-year-old mom told TODAY.com. "So we threw some Oreos in there."' I would think the mom would not want her daughter to go hungry and I would have done the same thing.
The mothers we have talked about in the news have also done heroic and generous things. So all news about the moms was not bad which made me happy because we don't want to put mothers down only. So not all news is bad news.
Advertising Assignment
Bounty Commercial (click this link or highlight and copy the one next to it into another window) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hYthYQlsjc
Charmin Commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb6DoufumIg
Clorox Commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_g7s2oBzCw
I asked the moms certain questions about commercials and mothers and these were some of the answers:
What is one kind of commercial you might like to see more often? (ex, messages for teens, safety, happy commercials, etc)
•Family oriented, real situations, funny, life lessons
•Feel good messages
•Uplifting commercials
•No sales commercials
•Anti-bullying
•Families working together, not just moms doing the work (though that has been my experience)
•More realistic
•Health and safety
•4. Is there a commercial that stands out to you because of the way it portrays motherhood? (Any commercial from any part of your life). If so, what was the commercial?
•Clorox
–“made me laugh, more like real life”
–“its so like boys”
•Bandaid
•Hallmark- mom working two jobs to put her daughter through college
Feminine Mystique
-20% of stay at home mothers are single, 5% cohabitating, and 7% married with husbands who don’t work
-Today’s stay at home moms are more likely to have a high school degree than in 1970
-In 1970 41% of children had a traditional stay at home mom, today it is 20%
-Hours a Week devoted to childcare: working mothers (11 hours), traditional stay at home (20 hours), cohabitating mothers (18 hours), single mothers (16 hours)
-A woman couldn’t start a business without her husband’s permissions
-You could be fired for being pregnant
-Job security depends on your weight
-Could only open a bank account or establish a line of credit with your husband cosigning with you
-You could not get a credit card if you were unmarried or your husband didn’t cosign
-Couldn’t serve on a jury
-Use birth control pills, especially if you weren’t married or your husband didn’t agree
-Go to an ivy league school, or A&M
-Earned 60% of an equal male pay
These statistics made me really think about how great I have it in this era. Women during the age of the Feminine Mystique really had it rough and very little freedom. It made me appreciate all of the opportunities I have as a woman today. I can later on choose to have kids, support my family and go to work if I desire. Women were only labeled housewives and had very few job opportunities. Nowadays, if I want to set my sights on something, I don't have to have a husband's permission and that is a freeing feeling.
Disney Films
Tangled https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi8kYcl2Y38
Two themes as the nature of mothers:
-Mothers as primary caregivers
Peter, lady, jungle, aristocats, rescuers, mulan, emperor
-Mothers as protectors
-Mothers as both
Dumbo, bambi, Dalmatians, lion, Tarzan
Disney moms were mostly absent or killed off throughout Disney movies. As a child, I did not notice that that had happened. Disney made it very subtle that moms were missing throughout the movies. Although, there were quite a few mother figures in the movies. Mary Poppins, Wendy from Peter Pan, Robin Hood and the Fairy Godmother from Sleeping Beauty are all good examples of mother figures. They may not have been the biological mother, but they cared for the child character as if it were one of their own. I enjoyed re-living my childhood and watching the movies once again, this time though, knowing that the mothers were barely there. This gave me a newer understanding of how mothers are portrayed throughout Disney and over another area of media.